Enclosure, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
On a west-facing hillside above the Slaheny River valley in south-west Kerry, a small oval outline sits half-swallowed by bog.
The low remains of a drystone wall, built without mortar in the traditional manner, trace an enclosure measuring roughly seven metres north to south and five metres east to west. Only about twenty centimetres of the wall protrudes above the bog surface, though it descends a further forty centimetres below, preserved by the peat that has slowly claimed it. A narrow entrance gap, less than a metre wide, opens to the south-east.
Enclosures of this kind are scattered across the upland landscapes of Kerry, typically associated with early agricultural or pastoral activity, though precise dating is rarely straightforward without excavation. What makes this one quietly interesting is its relationship to a companion feature, a hut site, recorded roughly twenty-five metres to the south. Together, the two structures suggest a small unit of human occupation on this exposed hillside, perhaps a seasonal one, where someone once kept animals or worked the land at the margins of more productive ground. The rough hill pasture that surrounds them today would not have been dramatically different from what those earlier occupants knew.